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GlaxoSmithKline has been fined £297 million and its former country manager handed a suspended prison sentence in China for bribery.

GSK accepted the decision by the Changsha Intermediate People's Court in Hunan province that it had bribed doctors and hospitals to use its products, adding it has taken steps to change its working practices.

Mark Reilly, the former China head of British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, will be deported from China and will not face jail time in the country, Reuters has reported citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

"Reilly will be deported so he won't be in detention in China," said the source with knowledge of the matter who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the case.

GlaxoSmithKline said a bribery case in China had been a "deeply disappointing matter" after a number of company executives were jailed and the firm was fined £297 million.

GSK said in a statement on their website that the activities by the firm's China unit were a "clear breach" of GSK's governance and compliance procedures.

GSK Chief Executive Officer Sir Andrew Witty said:

Reaching a conclusion in the investigation of our Chinese business is important, but this has been a deeply disappointing matter for GSK. We have and will continue to learn from this.

GSK has been in China for close to a hundred years and we remain fully committed to the country and its people. We will continue to expand access to innovative medicines and vaccines to improve their health and well-being.

We will also continue to invest directly in the country to support the government's health care reform agenda and long-term plans for economic growth.

The first human trials of a potential Ebola vaccine could begin in the Oxford as early as mid-September.

The candidate vaccine has been being developed by the US National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. Funding from a consortium of British bodies has allowed the UK trials to be fast-tracked.

Professor Adrian Hill, who will be running the trials at Oxford University, said he was looking for 60 healthy individuals aged 18 to 50 to take part in the study. Volunteers will have to make nine visits over six months and will receive modest compensation for their time.

Unlike with vaccines for some other illnesses, it does not contain any infectious virus material, so it "cannot cause a person who is vaccinated to become infected with Ebola," GlaxoSmithKline said in a statement.

Manufacturers are planning to produce around 10,000 doses of the potential vaccine that will be distributed to "high-risk communities" if the trials prove successful. Other trials are being planned in the US, Gambia and Mali.

British corporate investigator Peter Humphrey has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for illegally obtaining records on Chinese citizens, while his American wife was handed a two-year jail sentence, at a court in Shanghai.

Peter Humphrey and his American wife went on trial in Shanghai. Credit: CCTV/AP

The couple ran risk consultancy ChinaWhys, whose clients included British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc, which is at the centre of a separate corruption probe.

According to a statement read out by a court official at a press conference, Humphrey will be deported, but it gave no further details on that aspect of the judgment, including on whether Yu would also be deported.

The couple has the right to appeal their sentence within 10 days, the court added.